Do you dare to dream?

Well this Premier League football stuff is turning out to be easier than I thought.

Newcastle sit in 7th place in the table having played 23 games, which could turn out to be a European spot comw the end of the season.

Dare I say it? Should we be aiming to stay there and try to bag a European place? Surely not. That would be preposterous, off with my deluded head and so on. Am I really being too optimistic though?

I don't think I am to be honest. We are up there in the table so why not try an make hay while the sun shines? We have some key players to come back, and we have a run of fixtures now that doesn't incorcorporate many of the teams that are currently above us. If we can keep doing what we are doing then why couldn't we get that extra European spot?

Being realistic though, it would be a big ask, and it would be a massive achievement if we could pull it off. I'm just looking at our fixtures, and looking at the players we have to come back, and also the attitude of the team at present, and wondering whether or not we could actually do it.

The priority at the start of the season was to avoid relegation, and it still is I guess. I think we will do that, although nothing is certain of course, but the quicker we can achieve that the quicker we can push on and see just how many points we can actually achieve this season.

Europe may be too soon for us, but the fact that we are at least in with a shout for a late season push towards it is a fantastic sign. We have a team that can beat anyone on their day, and despite missing some key players, has been denied six points from two top six sides by last gasp equalisers. That isn't bad at all in my opinion.

Once you add Andy Carroll and Cheik Tiote back into the team we will look a lot stronger, plus we have Hatem Ben Arfa and Dan Gosling to come back into contention. Gosling may be a bit of an unknown quantity at the moment, but we know what the other three can add to the team, and all of them will improve it.

It may be too soon for us to talk of Europe, but given that we find ourselves in 7th place it would be a shame if we were to start slipping down the table. If we just avoided relegation I would be pretty disappointed. Not because our season would have been a failure, but because we could, and have, done so much better.

What do you think?

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